When it comes to employment, Americans in all sorts of occupations—from auto workers to Hollywood actors, from startup founders to restaurant servers—are feeling unsteady thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), reverberations of the pandemic, job design, and other factors, psychologists say.
“Instability of work is something that has been part of humanity, and it feels like it’s getting worse in some ways because it is getting worse,” said David Blustein, PhD, a professor in Boston College’s Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology.
“The number one thing people are craving right now is stability—especially in their workplaces,” said Ella F. Washington, PhD, an organizational psychologist and professor of practice at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
But the future of work isn’t all bleak: An unstable ground is strengthening workers’ resolve to advocate for meaning, well-being, and work-life balance on the job, and psychologists are poised to help.
“We know how to improve jobs and to improve motivation, to increase people’s satisfaction, and also to make it so that they add value,” said Susan J. Lambert, PhD, codirector of the Employment Instability, Family Well-Being, and Social Policy Scholars Network at the University of Chicago.
In other words, working toward greater stability, she added, “is good for business and it’s good for people, and I think it’s really good for society.”
Origins of instability
Instability at work doesn’t just mean the threat, or reality, of layoffs. Researchers define it as “a state in which the consequences of a mismatch between an individual’s functional and/or cognitive abilities and demands of their job can threaten continuing employment if not resolved” (Brain Injury, Vol. 20, No. 8, 2006).
Maybe someone’s not paid enough to maintain their lifestyle, maybe they can’t keep up with the pace, maybe they lack a sense of belonging, maybe their environment is straight-up toxic.
However workers experience it, the pandemic is perhaps the most blatant driver of instability at work—continuing to shake up the literal ground many employees stand on as employers experiment with hybrid schedules. While research suggests more flexibility largely benefits workers’ mental health and productivity, quickly-shifting mandates on who should work where and when can be disorienting, as can an office environment that’s just not the same.
Employees are “not necessarily in the same location when they are ‘on location.’ They’re not necessarily, or rarely, with the same configurations of people and activities that they were before,” said Amy Wrzesniewski, PhD, a professor of management at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania who studies meaning at work. “So maybe people are in the office a few days a week, but the office isn’t the office anymore.”
Job design is contributing to instability too, said Lambert, a professor at the University of Chicago Crown School of Social Work who studies work scheduling practices among low-wage workers.
“A lot of jobs have just been so fragmented that people can’t complete a whole job from beginning to end, and they can’t take pride in it,” she said. It’s easier for a salesperson who sees a purchase all the way through to reap satisfaction, for example, than someone whose single duty is to price items.
Put another way: When jobs are designed so that people can be replaceable, they’ll feel replaceable.
Relatedly, an increasing reliance on contract workers over salaried employees is driving instability, Blustein said. This played out in the auto workers’ strike of fall 2023, he said, where the workers demanded automakers stop hiring so many temporary workers to do their tasks.
Wavering equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) efforts can also contribute to instability at work, particularly among employees from marginalized groups, said Washington, an EDI expert who serves as founder and CEO of Ellavate Solutions in Washington, D.C.
Washington said she’s witnessed many organizations ease up on their commitment to EDI—sometimes unintentionally, and often quietly, such as having a page on their website about inclusion go dark or an EDI director role go unfilled.
“To me that’s the more scary part of the change because—unlike the change in 2020—you can’t see it until it’s too late,” she said.
But employees from underrepresented populations can feel it and, as a result, start to psychologically retreat. That has implications for both them and their employers, Washington said.
“Research shows that when employees can be their authentic selves and they can work and play toward their strengths, they’re not only happier and feel more of a sense of psychological safety, but they also do better work,” she said.
Finally, how artificial intelligence is and will affect people’s livelihoods is contributing to both practical and emotional instability among workers.
In a follow-up to APA’s 2023 Work in America survey specifically about AI, 38% of respondents reported worrying that AI might make some or all of their job duties obsolete, and 64% of those who were worried said they typically feel tense or stressed during the workday.
